A Quote by Mary Beard
I'm not in the slightest wanting to attack the women's movement here. But I think that in popular, broadly left-wing, broadly feminist discourse, there is a tendency to just label discrimination against women - and embedded assumptions about them - as misogyny and think 'job done.'
Related Quotes
I believe I was raised with feminist values, but I don't think I ever heard my Mom call herself a feminist. Before I identified as a feminist myself, I thought of feminism as more of a historical term describing the women's movement in the '70s but didn't know much about what they had done and didn't think it applied to my life at all.
Maybe I'm a bad feminist, but I am deeply committed to the issues important to the feminist movement. I have strong opinions about misogyny, institutional sexism that consistently places women at a disadvantage, the inequity in pay, the cult of beauty and thinness, the repeated attacks on reproductive freedom, violence against women, and on and on. I am as committed to fighting fiercely for equality as I am committed to disrupting the notion that there is an essential feminism.
The feminist movement is not about success for women. It is about treating women as victims and about telling women that you can't succeed because society is unfair to you, and I think that's a very unfortunate idea to put in the minds of young women because I believe women can do whatever they want.
Is there discrimination against women? Yes, like the old boys' network. And sometimes discrimination against women becomes discrimination against men: in hazardous fields, women suffer fewer hazards.
It's true that in a lot of western feminist movements, you see women working singularly from men. Suffragettes and the women's rights movement in the 60s here, but when I think of the Islamic feminist movement, I think of a lot of men who are very much standing with the women. It really feels like in equal numbers. Women are catching up in the field because we were not given access to knowledge and encouraged into these studies and so these men are helping us and empowering us. They are men of conscience who are fed up with this assumption that they're entitled.
Well, if you were the American public, you saw a catastrophe. In general, you would say, "The biggest institutions of America - Washington, broadly, and Wall Street, broadly - they're to blame." And, broadly, they're right.
I don't think that the feminist movement has done much for the characters of women.
It's always been important to me to be very upfront with people about the fact that I do identify as a feminist because it's an opportunity to expose people to and educated them about the movement. Young women don't identify as feminist is because they don't know any feminists and don't have a comprehensive understanding of what it is, I gave them example and an opportunity to ask about it. And once they saw that I wasn't the embodiment of the negative feminist stereotype - that I was a normal teen girl just like them - I think they became more open to learning about what feminism really is.
I don't think women are that vastly different from men. I'm a bit of a woman myself. But I'm not a feminist filmmaker. I'm not making a feminist thesis to prove that women are important. I just happen to make films with strong characters that are women.
The liberal wing of the feminist movement may have improved the lives of its middle- and upper-class constituency--indeed, 1992 was the Year of the White Middle Class Woman--but since the leadership of this faction of the feminist movement has singled out black men as the meta-enemy of women, these women represent one of the most serious threats to black male well-being since the Klan.
I've never been against women. That anti-feminist rap is bogus. I think men should be nice to women, buy them diamonds.
Ive never been against women. That anti-feminist rap is bogus. I think men should be nice to women, buy them diamonds.
Here's my feeling: For everyone, men and women, it's important to be a feminist. It's important to have female characters. It's wonderful for women to mentor other women, but it's just as important for women to mentor men and vice-versa. In my line of work, having Greg Daniels be such a great mentor to me is fantastic. Finding a writer's assistant, be it a man or a woman, and encouraging them to think with a feminist perspective, is key.
When the women's movement began, it was a middle-class phenomenon. Certainly, black women had other stuff to think about in the '60s besides a women's movement. Working-class women were slow to get into it.
Naturally my stories are about women - I'm a woman. I don't know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I'm not always sure what is meant by "feminist." In the beginning I used to say, well, of course I'm a feminist. But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I'm not. I think I'm a feminist as far as thinking that the experience of women is important. That is really the basis of feminism.
I think it's foolish to interview someone who's just promoting a movie that they're in and ask if they consider themselves a feminist. That's not about feminism; that's about the journalist wanting to gauge how much this person is aware of the world or is aware of the feminist movement.
